Rich Eats: Shopping List – Stay focused

Have you ever gone into a supermarket for one single item and left with a bag full?

You know that supermarkets plan the layout of their stores to maximise your spend right? Of course they do, they’re a business. The colour of the shelf labels, height of certain products on the shelves, the smells, the music, the lighting… get this, even the size of the floor tiles, is part of a very genius strategy to get us to fall asleep on our feet and spend spend spend.

I Love Fresh & Wild / Whole Foods in the UK though can you see what they’ve done with the pricing strategy of these beautiful Brazil nuts?

The image above shows the nuts on ‘Special Offer’ at £3.29 per 250g (discounted from £3.99) and the image below shows them in the exact same store at their normal price of £9.99 per kg, which is about £2.50 per 250g. The difference? The ‘Special Offer’ costs you £3.16 more per KG.

With millions being spent on Supermarkets’ marketing, and of course the infamous ‘in-store experience’, we’ve got to stay conscious when we’re buying fuel for our body.

Now, I shop without a list because the food I buy is ingrained in my mind, I’ve repeated time and time again. sounds boring? Nah, we all buy the same cycle of food over and over again. It’s what you do with it that counts…

A little info before we start:
G.I = Glycemic Index = the measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. In ‘English’, this means ‘how fast sugar is released into your blood’. The higher the G.I, the faster the glucose is released into your blood, and thus a faster increase in energy. This fast increase or ‘spike’ activates insulin which balances the level of sugar in your blood by storing any excess glucose as fat.

Kale
Coloured Greens
Spinach
Broccoli
Cucumber (on average I eat one every day or 2 days)
Tomatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Courgette
Lettuce
Parsley (this is a great herb to flavour eggs or chicken. Of course if you don’t like parsley then it’s not so great)Bananas
Pink Grapefruit (AWESOME – vitamins, cleaning the body and reported to slow sugar release fro stomach )
Blueberries
Strawberries
Raspberries
Oranges
Green Apples (lower sugar content than red though this is if you want to get really picky)
Mango
Almonds (I eat a handful every day)
Brasil nuts (around 8 per day for their selenium)
Cacao Beans (the purest form of chocolate – great hit of magnesium – important for sleep and muscles and generally lacking in western diet)
Dates (no added sugar / oil)
Raisins (California Raisins and Nakd are pretty much the only ones in the UK without oil or sugar. Comment on this blog with ones you find)
Real Organic Butter or Ghee (for cooking)
Olives

White Pasta
White Bread (organic brown/multigrain bread I will eat every few years and regret it.)
Legumes / beans (these agree with some people more than others. Generally not easy to digest = bad)
Refined Sugar (added)
Processed meats (Head to the Deli and ask for ‘off the bone’ for the real stuff)
Yoghurt with any fruit flavour (They are full of with sugar, sweeteners, syrups and other JUNK that is unnecessary and can/will affect your energy levels ‘spike & crash’ and your mood)Anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup in the ingredients list (most fizzy drinks)
Cordial Mixers that make ‘fruit flavoured water’. Never drink it and never give it to your kids. Help them enjoy water.
Avoid – breakfast cereal – pretty much just sugar and wheat.

Fruit juice in a carton. When they take the fibre away from fruit we’re left with the juice. It’s stored for a while so it loses a large percentage of any vitamins Fine, if you’ve had a massive workout or ran a marathon, or even a little hungover, though juice in a carton is, in essence, unnecessary fructose that acts in a similar way to sugar – it spikes our energy and gets stored as fat. If you’re really into juice opt for freshly squeezed (in front of your eyes) and get the pulp put back in. Green apples have a low G.I so the sugars are released more slowly = better for not storing that sugar as fat.

Important Notes:
1) Fat is not the enemy, Sugar (kind of is – that’s a long story too)

2) Buy organic, grass fed, free-range, ethically sourced meat when you can because, in part, we take on whatever has been fed to the animal.

2 comments on “Rich Eats: Shopping List – Stay focused”

Thanks for your question. I Highly recommend it, it’s a much more stable oil than others so it’s better for cooking at higher temperatures.

Oils like Olive Oil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (awesome for salads) and Veg oil are less stable and break down when heated at too higher temperature. Basically, if the oil is ‘smoking’ it’s damaged and our bodies will struggle to digest it.